


the part where we run away

by amainiris



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Artists, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25208017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amainiris/pseuds/amainiris
Summary: Being underneath Sansa’s eye for the duration of the painting is nothing like Margaery thought it would be. She does have to sit straight — very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, like all of those voiceless women contained in black and white photographs for generations. But she doesn’t expect Sansa’s gentleness, nor her soft, sly humor, nor her discerning eye. Maybe she should have. She gets the feeling, sometimes, that Sansa has been underestimated too much in her short life.“You need to stop smiling,” Sansa says eventually, during one of their sessions.“I’m not smiling,” Margaery says.“Your lip is curled up, just at the edge,” Sansa points out. “Like you’re thinking of someone you care for.”Margaery almost wants to say, stupidly, I’m thinking ofyou.
Relationships: Sansa Stark/Margaery Tyrell
Comments: 10
Kudos: 57





	the part where we run away

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this song](https://youtu.be/10JmYIBfErY).

She’s rehearsed this a thousand times in the confines of her own head, but once she speaks the words aloud — even to herself — they become true.

“I’m sorry, miss, I’m in love with your daughter.”

The mirror offers no reply, and Margaery stares at her own reflection, marking the unnatural paleness of her face, the stubbornness of her lower lip. She hadn’t intended to fall in love with Sansa Stark, but then again, she’s pretty certain that no one ever does. Fidgeting with her cap sleeve blouse, the demure navy blue skirt, she at last relents —nothing will make it perfect. Nothing about this will be perfect until she makes it right, and does what she should have done a long time ago. Such a cliche, she thinks dispiritedly. Why is she _apologizing?_ Margaery only apologizes when it’s necessary, when the pieces align in her favor and she acknowledges that it’s the tactically appropriate move to make.

But she’s hesitant, almost frightened, if she’s honest with herself. Not because of who she is, of who she loves - Margaery has long outgrown that, ever since sixth grade when she kissed some nameless girl on the playground: just a moth-light brush of two mouths, clumsy, innocent. Childish.

She’s frightened of causing Sansa more pain — and that’s when she knows, when the coldness settles into her chest and it’s impossible to turn her face away from the sharp relief of her own recognition.

Of course she loves her, Margaery thinks. How could she not?

*

She can remember, still, the first time she saw the other girl. It’s a memory she looks back on often, holds cupped in the palm of her hand like some beautiful creature trapped in amber, in the way people do with those little things that change them forever.

It shouldn’t have even happened, she thinks. Sansa had only been Highgarden because Margaery’s mother had commissioned a portrait of her to begin with. It was a dreadful family tradition, Margaery had always thought, steeped in antiquity and outdated modes of thought, and for some reason she loathed the idea of her image being propped up on the wall besides her grandmother and brothers. It just seemed unnecessarily… vain. Silly, and vain. Besides that, Margaery has always despised sitting for long hours, back aching, neck straight, sweat curling little tendrils of her honey-brown hair. She knows she takes a good photo, but she was never certain that it would translate properly to a portrait: the too-long neck, swanlike from some angles and cartoonish from others, the riotous fall of curls and eerily absorbing hazel-brown eyes. But as it turns out, she shouldn’t have worried. About anything.

Sansa had come in the middle of the night, in the very heart of a storm, pulling up to the Tyrell household in a beat-up Toyota that coughed exhaust. Margaery had been awake, watching from her bedroom window, and observed her from afar. The ropes of autumn-brown hair tucked under her hat, too-large clothes, long limbs and the vivid flash of her face in profile had unsettled Margaery at once. Unsettled her in a way that she didn’t understand, and thought she never would.

So no, it shouldn’t have happened — but her mind spins with relief, almost with dizziness, when she considers that it did.

She met Sansa in the dining room the next morning. The other girl had been setting up her easel, mixing paints, and had turned to Margaery almost shyly when she sensed her enter the room. It wasn’t a natural shyness, Margaery had ascertained almost at once; this was a shyness born of long-endured hardship, of sadnesses and griefs tucked carefully away. Sansa’s blue eyes were enormous, gleaming almost as if with tears — Margaery had to lean forward to observe that it was just a trick of the light.

“Sansa Stark,” the other girl said, extending a hand. She was taller than Margaery, by at least half a head, gangly almost like a colt and undeniably beautiful. Like one of the models Margaery had spent so much time covertly admiring in fashion magazines when she was younger: the legs like a filly, the poignant eyes that always seemed rapt with some nameless emotion. She held herself very straight, like a girl who had been conditioned thoroughly into doing so, and her hand was cold when Margaery squeezed it. Margaery soon determined this about Sansa; she was always, always cold.

“Margaery Tyrell.”

Margaery can’t remember the moment she began liking girls, but she remembers, so vividly, the first moment she knew she could fall in love with one. And staring at Sansa in the half-light of the dining room, all polished silver and dark vaulted ceilings, she felt that sensation wash over her again. It wasn’t love at first sight. It was nothing like that. It was the acknowledgment of someone else’s existence: the awareness that someone other than herself was _real._

Being underneath Sansa’s eye for the duration of the painting is nothing like Margaery thought it would be. She does have to sit straight — very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, like all of those voiceless women contained in black and white photographs for generations. But she doesn’t expect Sansa’s gentleness, nor her sly humor, nor her discerning eye. Maybe she should have. She gets the feeling, sometimes, that Sansa has been underestimated too much in her short life.

“You need to stop smiling,” Sansa says eventually, during one of their sessions.

“I’m not smiling,” Margaery says.

“Your lip is curled up, just at the edge,” Sansa points out. “Like you’re thinking of someone you care for.”

Margaery almost wants to say, stupidly, _I’m thinking of_ you.

Instead she tries to imagine something mournful, something appropriately somber. It doesn’t work, and when she glances back at Sansa, from underneath her dark lashes, she catches the other girl smiling slightly too. Something tightens in her chest, not unpleasantly. It makes her feel off balance, knocked astray, as if she’s abandoning herself in a way that is not entirely wrong. In a way that could be very right.

They walk the Tyrell grounds together, spend time lazing in the greenhouses where Sansa points out flowers whose names even Margaery doesn’t know. In turn Margaery shows Sansa her textbooks from class, explains the family business in terms appropriately dry and scathing. She loves her family, but not the empire they’ve built, and she thinks Sansa understands that, in her way. She thinks the other girl understands what it’s like to break from things that don’t seem right.

So much to remember, Margaery thinks. So much to try not to forget: when the rain came again in one swift exhale and they’d been caught underneath one of the old willows by the river; when Margaery had brought Sansa into the city and they’d spent the night having one of their dizzying conversations where anything could be said; when she caught a glimpse of the other girl’s hip bones as her shirt lifted and there was that sense of inevitability, as if Margaery knew — just knew — the feeling of them underneath her hands, the sharp juts of them fading into the slope of Sansa’s stomach.

One night Sansa decides to dye her hair dark brown, on impulse. By this time Margaery knows that this is not very much like Sansa, but the other girl is giddy with the idea and Margaery doesn’t want to dissuade her strange happiness. She tilts the other girl’s head over the claw-footed tub in her bathroom, mixes the dye, coaxes it gently into her hair. Sansa remains very still as she does so, half-closing her eyes when Margaery runs her fingers over her scalp.

Afterwards, the result is striking.

“How do I look?” Sansa asks, standing in the spotted lights of the bathroom mirror. “Do I look like someone else?”

“You look beautiful,” Margaery says. “Like an actress.”

“We could go somewhere,” Sansa says then, swaying a little on her feet, as if caught up in a dream. “We could go somewhere — anywhere. Wear disguises. We could dye your hair, too. No one would recognize us.”

“To the west coast,” Margaery says, smiling faintly. “Or even further east.”

“Is this the part where we run away together?” Sansa asks, and she’s almost laughing, for one of the first times Margaery has ever seen. Something turns in Margaery’s chest, traitorous and sweet, and then almost caves in.

“No,” Margaery says finally, ducking her head close. “This is the part where I kiss you.”

*

She doesn’t ask to see the painting for a long time. The painting, in its way, becomes irrelevant; Margaery has no desire to be trapped to the point of lifelessness, and — she has the distinct feeling — neither does Sansa.

“Why do you paint?” she asks the other girl curiously, one afternoon when they’re lying in Margaery’s bed. Sansa’s head is touching Margaery’s shoulder, her fingertips are skimming along the line of Margaery’s forearm, and for a long time she says nothing. Until;

“I want to leave a part of myself in this world,” she says in return. “Something beautiful. Do you understand?”

Margaery feels herself stir slightly on the bed. “I want to see myself the way you do.”

Sansa twists at the torso, turns and props herself up on an elbow. “Do you, really?”

“Yes,” says Margaery. “Or—I don’t know. Do I?”

Every time Sansa smiles, Margaery is almost afraid it will be the last time. But the other girl does it now, and dips her head to kiss Margaery’s forehead.

“I’ll show you, then,” she says. “You’ll be the first to see it, when it’s done. Not your mother, or your father.”

“I can’t see it now?” Margaery pouts very well; it’s a gift. She feels Sansa’s returning grin.

“Seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes isn’t always the most comfortable thing.” She sounds as if she speaks from experience.

“I don’t want to be comfortable,” Margaery says, and her voice is almost hushed now. “I just want to be with you.”

Sansa goes still. “Really?”

“Of course,” says Margaery, blindsided by how Sansa didn’t know, how she didn’t _see._ And then she draws Sansa slowly down to her, hands sliding over her waist and then lower yet, but Sansa just puts two fingers to her lips.

“I’m afraid,” Sansa says, “That the portrait won’t be good enough.”

“For my mother?” Margaery’s smile is teasing.

“No,” Sansa says, very seriously. “For you.”

“It’s not about me,” Margaery says in return, and slips her hand down Sansa’s arm, elbow to wrist. The other girl is always so cold. “The portrait — it’s not for me. I don’t care about it; I never did. I care about —”

“Me?” Sansa’s voice is tentatively hopeful, almost ashamed.

“Yes,” Margaery says, with atypical bluntness. “Yes. I want to meet your family; I want to see where you come from, and I want to go wherever you’re going —”

Sansa is smiling again, smiling truly, and Margaery feels her heart open like a flower to the sun.

“This is the part,” Sansa says again, so softly, “Where we run away.” Margaery doesn’t know if it’s a promise or something strangely yearning. Something impossible. But she knows how to respond.

“Yes,” Margaery says, cradling the other girl to her. The afternoon light is dizzying, and her head is light, and she feels, in that moment, as if she could live a thousand lives and they would all lead her — inexplicably, unexplainably — _here._

Margaery kisses her and then draws away slowly, eyes locked on Sansa’s. “This is the part where we run away.”


End file.
